Carol Pineau - Africa Investment Horizons

Carol Pineau's new film, Africa Investment Horizons is a film that showcases where investors should invest in Africa. This film shows where venture capitalists and others are making money and how they're reaping unbelievable returns.

Africa Investment Horizons is about money, and lots of it. Investors – one after another – talk about astounding returns, doubling their money, even tripling. But at its heart, the film is the story of people working to create a new economic future for Africa.

The film shows the three major avenues for investment in Africa: capital markets, equity funds and launching a business. The rewards are shown, as are the risks.

Simba Technology LTD

Formed in 1996, SIMBA TECHNOLOGY LTD (Nairobi, Kenya), part of Simba Group of Companies, supply and integrate best of breed products to provide clients with a seamless business solution.

As a leader in development, applications and system integration Simba have provided business solutions to clients world-wide. To ensure that our clients have access to the highest quality software professionals, our consultants are trained in and fully conversant with new and emerging technologies.

Simba professionals have many years of experience in both the IT and financial management sectors. "The group enjoys accreditation with several international companies of high repute, some of which are Oracle Corporation, IBM, Infosys Technologies, ICICI Infotech, ACI, Integrated Tertiary Software, Sage Pastel."

Biomass 4 Africa

The biomass4africa discussion forum is an email and web based forum to discuss all issues related to the application of biomass energy in Africa. All types of biomass energy can be discussed, from fuelwood use, energy efficient stoves, charcoal to cogeneration at sugarmills.

India losing it's competitve advantage of Outsourcing?

I wrote earlier this year about the global outsourcing market and Africa's potential to grab some market share. Business Week magazine says the fallen dollar and the higher wages in India are hurting some Indian vendors. No one can do anything to stop the fallen dollar. The fact is, the US dollar needs to fall further to bridge the trade deficit if faces.

This is an opportune time for African IT vendors to partner with Indian IT firms who have experience to bring jobs and contracts to Africa.


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Africa Venture Capital Fellows

The Africa Venture Capital Fellows (AVCF) is an initiative of the World Economic Forum's Global Leaders of Tomorrow (GLT) program aimed at promoting venture capital in Africa by educating and training future venture capitalists and leaders of high-growth and early stage companies based in Africa. The initiative is being established based on the important role that venture capital can play in accelerating the entrepreneurial economy in Africa.

All Africa Reports - India Unveils New Plan for Partners on Continent

All Africa has an article about India's prominent role in Africa. Even though China gets more attention because of sheer size of deals it is signing on the continent, India has had closer ties to Africa even before the Chinese stepped a foot on the continent.

From All Africa

Business Daily (Nairobi)

8 April 2008
Posted to the web 8 April 2008

Allan Odhiambo

India unveiled a bag of goodies for African partners attending the first India-Africa summit signalling the extent it is ready to go to win hearts in the natural resource-rich continent.

Key among the offers is duty-free access to India's domestic market and a significant increase in development financing.

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Ethiopia launches new coffee brand

AfricaNews is reporting that Ethiopia, the birthplace of the coffee bean is planning on launching a new coffee brand.

“We are launching a new coffee brand to champion Ethiopia’s famous, unique and distinctive fine coffee in the international market” , Mengistie said.

Though Ethiopia is a historic birth place of coffee, Ethiopia is way back in proactively managing and promoting its famous fine coffee.

The move Ethiopia took is a land mark moment for the nation says Getachew.

“This is a land mark moment for Ethiopia and we are proud to project the identity of Ethiopian coffee this way and we look forward our coffee farmers to reap the rewards in short and long terms.”

Lebone - off grid energy delivery in Africa

Lebônê Solutions, Inc. is a social enterprise working in off-grid energy delivery and lighting technology. The mission of Lebônê is to end the energy and lighting crisis in Africa by identifying and harnessing emerging technologies, developing and adapting them for the African market, and delivering them to rural villages in an innovative and accessible manner.


The Problem

There is currently a dramatic shortage of electrical power in Africa. One billion Africans, constituting a sixth of the world’s population, generate only 4% of global electricity. In most African countries, 95% of the population is living off-grid with no access to electricity (World Bank Millennium Goals Report, 2006). This has a devastating effect on socio-economic development, education, health, and safety. Imagine a village at night in which students are walking to distant highways to study under streetlights, where small merchants are investing half of their resources to pay for kerosene lighting to run their operations, and where emergency health workers, if operating at all, are trying to stitch up wounds and perform surgeries by candlelight. Lack of energy is one of the Africa’s biggest obstacles to development, and a major deterrent for foreign investors.

ASARECA - promoting agribusiness research in Africa

Mission

Promoting economic growth, fighting poverty, reducing hunger and enhancing resources through regional collective action in agricultural research for development, extension and agricultural training and education.

Strategic Goal

ASARECA's primary goal is to facilitate agricultural research in ECA that will promote agriculture oriented towards markets and income generation. Its secondary goal is to serve as the main forum where strategies and ideas for agricultural research and their relationship to agricultural development in the sub-region are conceived and exchanged.

Solar Aid - sustainable solar energy projects

SolarAid aims to enable the world’s poorest people to have clean, renewable power. Solar power leads to better education, health, safety and income by allowing poor communities to cook, pump water, run fridges, store vaccines, light homes, schools, clinics and businesses, power computers and homes, farm more effectively, and much more.

SolarAid carries out DIY solar projects – training local communities how to build small scale solar devices such as solar powered radios and lanterns – and installs small solar systems for community centres, medical clinics, schools and other such communal infrastructure.

Mozambique: Consortium with South African, Chinese and Mozambican capital invests in steel plant

Maputo, Mozambique, 18 April – A consortium with South African, Chinese and Mozambican capital has invested US$44 million in the construction of a steel tube factory at Beluluane Industrial Park 16 kilometers outside Maputo, the Notícias newspaper reported Friday.

The factory should begin producing at the end of the year or in early 2009, with markets already assured in Africa and the United States linked to the industry of transporting petroleum and natural gas derivatives, the newspaper indicated.

In the first phase the plant will have the capacity to produce 200,000 tons of steel tubes per year, with prospects of increasing to 700,000 tons per year.

Equatorial Biofuels-Crude Palm Oil via Timbuktu Chronicles

Timbuktu Chronicles reports on Palm Oil for Biofuels.

CS Monitor reports on David Parker's company Equatorial Biofuels,which :

Has taken over the 36,000-acre Palm Bay plantation and plans to invest up to $10 million initially to rehabilitate the estate and begin producing palm oil industrially again.

Their goals are to:

Working Villages International

Forty years ago, the residents of the Ruzizi Valley, in Eastern Congo, had a peaceful prosperous happy life. Today, after more than a decade of civil war, the entire area is devastated, and the people have been reduced to the status of refugees, dependent on foreign assistance.

Now, in a unique partnership with Working Villages International, the people of Ruzizi are working hard to rebuild the paradise they once enjoyed. The development formula is simple – village based redevelopment with an emphasis on self-reliance and appropriate technology.

EPROM - Entrepreneurial programming and research on mobiles

EPROM, part of the Program for Developmental Entrepreneurship within the MIT Design Laboratory, aims to foster mobile phone-related research and entrepreneurship. Key activities include:

• the development of new applications for mobile phone users worldwide
• academic research using mobile phones
• the creation of a widely applicable mobile phone programming curriculum

EPROM has now expanded to 10 countries within Sub-Saharan Africa!

System Specs | Nigeria's leading software house

Founded in 1991, SystemSpecs has since emerged as a leading provider of Financial and Human Capital Software Solutions for the Nigerian and African environment.

SystemSpecs is a software house with a focus on providing the most qualitative Human Capital Management and Financial software solutions for the Nigerian and African market.

SystemSpecs offers business-centric applications, which lie at the core of enterprises.

KAPS - Parking management control systems

A Kenyan parking management company has an automated system for car parking management.

From KAPS

KAPS has been a solution provider of car parking, access control and revenue management systems since 1999. KAPS has been the clear leader regionally in this sector. We have made several innovations including our world-class software; installation of specialized systems incorporating real world automation of electronically driven mechanized systems, audio and video automation and data capture solutions.

Well-designed Automation is the ideal solution to modern facilities management... KAPS has successfully installed such systems for municipalities, major facilities, parking lots and shopping malls. Our parking services in particular now support over 20,000 vehicle transactions daily.Nevertheless, the key to effective parking solutions is management expertise. KAPS has rapidly built a reservoir of management capabilities including a portfolio of targeted software tools. This places KAPS in the best position to be your partner in every parking situation.

African tech Hot Spots - Business Daily Kenya

Business Daily has listed some investment hot spots on a PDF that are ripe for investments. Most of these investments I've covered before, except for electronics assembly in Africa.

From Business Daily:

Retail - Telecoms dealer
New Media - Television Innovator
Power - Alternative energy supplier
Recycling - E-waste capitalist
Business Process Outsourcing (I've dabbled in this area) - Outsourcing specialist
Assembler - Local PC manufacturer
Software - Linux or other open source tools

Africa Genome Education Institute - 180 genomes sequenced

The Africa Genome Education Institute is devoted to the public understanding of genomes, which are the genetic instructions contained in the cells of living organisms. Over 180 genomes have been sequenced (biochemically described) thus far, including the one for modern human beings.

The AGEI works in three areas: firstly, the Living History Project, which seeks to trace the ancestral geographic origins of South Africans by looking at specific segments of an individual's genome. Secondly, the Colour of Our Skins Project, which is an effort to communicate the most current evolutionary biological science on skin (and hair) pigmentation to the public and especially to children of school-going age; and thirdly, a project to build interdisciplinary support for biotechnology and genetics in Africa, a continent-wide enterprise to support practising scientists to deal with the ethical, legal and social implications of genetic modification.

Investors are currently showing new found interest in Africa's resources. Many are considering Africa the next Asia. The Associated Press has an interesting take on the rush to the continent.

Africa, the next Asia for investors?

By The Associated Press

Economies in Africa are among the world's fast growers, and more analysts suggest investors pay attention to the continent.

Historically, heavy debt loads and political strife weighed on Africa. But since 2001, the resource-rich continent has been lifted by stronger prices for oil, gold and other commodities.

Read more

IST-Africa 2008 Conference and Exhibition

14-16 May 08 | Windhoek, Namibia

IST-Africa 2008 will take place on May 14-16, 2008 in Windhoek, Namibia. The programme combines strategic keynote presentations, technical and policy papers, case studies, workshops, an exhibition and social activities.

Crop to Cup - Family farmed coffee

Crop to Cup helps cultivate and helps run coffee plantation in Africa.

Here is what they say on their site.

We are the company that brings you closer to the crop.

Yes, yes, we are a middle man, but we are the only middle man between you and the farmer.

At Crop to Cup Coffee Company we represent farmer entrepreneurs, providing them with technology and marketing services to put them in touch with interested consumers here in the US. We are dedicated to making a positive impact in the world by providing coffee farmers and coffee lovers with the tools and services they need to drive this change themselves.

Our goal at C2C is to improve the quality and integrity of coffee served at restaurants, homes, offices, morning campfires, Star Trek conventions (OK – you get the point – wherever you might find coffee served). In areas around the equator (that’s where your coffee grows) we’re a network of partners and farmer entrepreneurs working towards the improvement of livelihoods through the digitization of coffee farming. Farmers, their coffees, the roasters who sculpt this coffee to the retailer and consumer - we put everybody online. Track your coffee by tracing your purchase back to the people who produced it.

SME Toolkit - small business information

A project of the International Finance Corporation, a member of the World Bank Group, the Africa Toolkit offers free business management information and training for small businesses / small and medium enterprises (SMEs) on accounting and finance, business planning, human resources (HR), marketing and sales, operations, and information technology (IT). The SME Toolkit offers a wide range of how-to articles, business forms, free business software, online training, self-assessment exercises, quizzes, and resources to help entrepreneurs, business owners, and managers in Africa start, finance, formalize, and grow their businesses.

I'm speaking at PodcampDC - This Sat

Some of you know how passionate I am about entrepreneurship and Web 2.0 in Africa. This weekend I'm going to be speaking at PodCampDC, being held in Arlington, VA http://podcampdc.org/. I will continue the discussion I had at the Africa 2.0 panel at SXSW held in Austin, TX http://tinyurl.com/4gx8x4.

The discussion will also broaden to include informal markets and venture capital opportunities in Africa.

Schedule and Guide
==================================

There's an UN-official Guidebook to PodCamp DC with maps, schedule, sessions, and more, created by volunteer Christopher Penn, located here:

http://www.christopherspenn.com/podcampdcguide.pdf

==================================

If you can't make it or you are not in the DC area please forward to friends, family, or colleagues who may be interested in attending.

Africa you never see on tv

This is a great video of African renaissance.

ITU Telecom presents Africa 2008 - Cairo, Egypt

ITU TELECOM AFRICA 2008 is a major networking platform for Africa's top ICT names to come together and focus on core issues relating to ICT expansion across the region. From 12 - 15 May 2008, AFRICA 2008 populates the Cairo International Convention and Exhibition Centre (CICC) in Cairo, Egypt.

ITU TELECOM AFRICA 2008 encompasses an Exhibition featuring the latest technologies and innovations, and an extensive Forum that explores key technologies, policies and applications driving Africa's ICT sector. Participants can take part in a variety of ways; from a booth on the showfloor to sponsorship of a networking function or high profile item. The Sales Brochure, Sponsorship Brochure and Event Overview are all available for download in pdf format.

Baobab Health Partnership

Vision

Baobab Health Partnership is dedicated to becoming the world leader in technology innovation for the developing world.

Mission

Baobab’s mission is to partner with the Ministry of Health and existing health care providers to solve the health care crisis in Malawi with solutions that can be applied across the developing world. We will provide technology leadership and best practices by innovating on our existing solutions in Malawi and incubating new initiatives. Our guiding principles as we tackle projects will include reducing costs, making technology easier to use and maintain, and allowing technology to be deployed in highly resource constrained environments (e.g., by investing in renewable energy).

Portal Limited - Ghana forestry and timber production

Portal limited is a maker of quality wood panel doors. Portal has it's own plantation programme in the western and central regions of Ghana.

The Portal Forest Estate is planning to be a sustainable forest plantation to produce timber and non-timber products.

To ensure sustainability, Portal is actively engaged in: fast growing tree plantations, agro-forestry, non-timber forest production, and planned eco-tourism.

African Virtual University - higher education in Africa

The African Virtual University (AVU) is a Pan African Intergovernmental Organization whose aim is to significantly increase access to quality higher education and training through the innovative use of information communication technologies.

As an African organization, the AVU has a mandate to increase access for tertiary education and trainning using Open Distance and eLearning (ODeL) methodologies.

The AVU headquarters is situated in Nairobi, Kenya and a regional office is based in Dakar, Senegal in West Africa.

Ocean Power in Africa?

Business Week wrote an article about Europe's obsession with wave power. Specifially, Europe's utility companies are using tidal machines and turbines in the water to take advantage of ocean currents for electricity generation.

Can this technology help solve Africa's energy needs? Currently, Denmark is the only nation that utilizes the largest percentage of wave power for it's energy needs. This technology is still new, but it has shown some promise and is renewing more interest.

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Video of Flower business in Ethiopia

Blogger Africaincorp has a video of a flower business in Ethiopia.

Godisa - Solar Aid battery charger from Africa

Godisa meets this urgent human need with products that are:

• Lower priced – at least 75% less expensive than comparable products allowing bulk purchase for donation purposes by government, deaf schools, hearing INGOs, deaf groups and caring individuals; as well as subsidized direct sales to audiologists and hearing impaired people living in developing countries;

• High quality – all of Godisa’s products meet applicable World Health Organization guidelines and use robust and proven components that last for many years;

• Technically advanced – internationally award-winning design, rapid and highly effective battery charging with the Solar Aid, and modern digital BTE hearing aids;

• Environmentally sound – solar powered (clean energy) battery recharging that reduces the harmful environmental impacts of battery disposal; and

• Designed for the developing world – an African organization that understands the challenges faced by hearing impaired people and organizations in developing countries.

Sovereign Wealth Funds Should Invest in Africa, Zoellick Says

Sovereign wealth funds hold trillions of dollars of funds. These state funds which are mostly in Asia and Middle East, just bailed out many of the top banks on Wall Street. The influence of sovereign wealth funds is so apparent that World Bank chief Robert Zoelick has issued a plea for these funds to invest in Africa.

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The new India - Africa partnership

There is a new renaissance in bilateral partnerships between emerging markets. India just organized a summit for African leaders to discuss trade partnerships that would benefit both markets. India is trying to mimic and duplicate China's success in Africa. For instance, China organized a similar summit in 2006.

India and Africa are closely more related because of colonial ties to the crown. Also, culturally, India is much more similar to Africa then China. Even the Brazilians, have signed trade deals for energy, biofuel and agriculture.

The BBC has written more about this summit.

Umbono Capital Partners - Africa investment banking

Umbono Capital Partners was founded in 1998 by the core professional team with the aim of creating Africa's premier investment banking group, with particular focus on mining, energy and other natural resources. Umbono manages it's own principal investments portfolio and provides asset management, investing, financing and advisory services to it's clients.

Umbono has a specialist focus in identifying, analysing and structuring investments in Africa, and in providing transaction advisory and corporate finance work related to target companies in other African countries.

Umbono's team consists of 30 group staff members based in Johannesburg and Toronto.

Unleashing Africa's Potential - The World Bank

East and Southern Africa is the only region in the world not connected to the global broadband infrastructure. This 'missing link' explains why the region accounts for less than one percent of the world's bandwidth capacity.